Depths of Despair
by Hildegaarde
Summary: Schultz meets the crew of the submarine...For the 2017 Short Story Speed Writing challenge.


"Lieutenant Tarrandale, report to communications." The command roused E.T. from his magazine serial and sent him trudging toward the rear of the submarine. His bunkmate Louis, exiting the radio room as he approached, sent him a warning grimace and an expressive tip of his head.

"What's the matter? Did I volunteer for something again?"

"I think the big brass spends all their time dreaming up ways to make our life harder. Just for kicks!" Louis was trying out his latest colloquialism acquired from a 'passenger' they had recently transported. "They'll tell you soon enough. It's Papa Bear again."

E.T. shrugged. "Please, don't scare me more than is absolutely necessary. What's going on?"

But Louis was already disappearing down the narrow passageway, leaving his friend to enter the room that housed their only communication with the topside world.

"Lietenant, we have orders to pick up a package for Papa Bear," the captain informed him without looking up. "A hostile package, and one that apparently weighs quite a bit. Make sure we have somewhere to put the package for the delivery to England."

"Aye aye, sir." Dismissed with a salute, E.T. headed to the officer's quarters to prepare the spare bunk that was always used when the men they were supporting needed to transport someone to England. Sometimes that person was hostile, sometimes they were a grateful refugee. The submarine crew never asked questions. It was safer not to know. They just kept the wide assortment of people safe and secure until they reached the shores of England and turned them over to the inevitably waiting agent from the London office.

"Hostile and heavy," Louis's usually cheerful voice was melancholy. "It's not that I don't appreciate the warning. But let's assume you were going to die. Would you want to know about it or not?"

"Louis, relax. I seriously doubt they would send us someone heavy enough to sink the sub. Now, about that gyroscope-"

"You want to talk about gyroscopes at a time like this?" Louis moaned. "Don't you remember that time that Papa Bear asked us to transport a chemical weapon wrapped in a paper sack? Or the time we had to call up Newark and ask for a recipe? How about-"

"I get the picture," E.T. agreed. "You don't trust Papa Bear not to ask for something outrageous."

"I overheard the captain," Louis paused for dramatic effect, "I heard him mutter something under his breath about a general!"

"One of ours or one of theirs?" He was grateful to be in the submarine and not in the trenches, so his personal practice was to not look too closely into the details of what they got up to.

"I don't know. But generals are always trouble. You mark my words."

It was their standard practice to never follow a pattern in their arrival just offshore. 'Packages' would be brought out in a boat manned by one or two underground agents, bundled down the hatch and into the reserved berthing space, the hatch would close, and the boat would submerge, but it was always at a different time and in a slightly different location. E.T. took up his duty station at the radio, put away the loose paraphernalia on the desk that apt to fly about in sudden maneuvers, and prepared to relay messages.

"Funny, it doesn't seem like it's ten o'clock already. It wasn't supposed to be raining then," he mumbled as he checked his watch for the third time. The storms that rocked the surface never affected them when they were submerged, so it was disconcerting to suddenly find oneself noticing rain on the top of the hull.

"Well it's ten o'clock here all right." The voice would have been deep and mellow if not for the crackling of the radio speaker.

E.T. realized with some embarrassment that he had his finger on the transmit button. Papa Bear's radioman had the habit of being uncomfortably efficient and was at his post earlier than planned. "Sorry about that. I was thinking out loud."

The radio room door was left ajar, and at a bustling in the passageway E.T. glanced up in time to see four crew members, each holding a limb of a decidedly fat gentleman in civilian clothing. He had graying hair and a matching Hitler mustache perched on his upper lip, and his head lolled as his bearers attempted to stuff his unconscious form through the narrow doorways of the submarine.

"I think our package is aboard. Unconscious. Is that the plan?" he inquired into the radio.

"That's the plan. We got word a German general was arriving at our home base in civilian clothing, looking for somewhere to hide out. He was going to be using the VIP quarters, so we left a plate of food and a rather special glass of wine out for him," the mellow voice explained. "Once he was nice and sleepy from the wine, one of our men snuck up behind him and slipped a bag over his head, and the underground shipped him off to you."

"A rather neat and tidy bit of work. Good show," E.T. complimented. "There's a place for everything, and the thing is in its place. Goldilocks over and out."

The sub had almost completed its descent to the bottom of the sea to begin the perilous journey back to England when E.T. was roused from his radio by the sound of shouting from the officers' berthing.

"Where am I? What is happening to me?"

Louis Lassen, temporarily assigned to guard duty, was sorely tempted to sit on the enormous man's chest to hold him down, but doubted that even that would be effective. "You're on a submarine, General. Please keep your voice down, unless you want to be torpedoed."

"General?" The small eyes bulged. "Who is a general? Where?"

"He's you, that's who he is," Louis pressed his hand against the man's shoulder, but he sat up anyway and hit his head on the upper bunk.

"I am not a general! I am just a sergeant!" The prisoner's voice turned pleading. "Sergeant Schultz from Stalag 13, and I see nothing, nothing! Please, there is no need to put me in a submarine! You will have to let me off!"

"Well, the weather won't allow that because you're already on a submarine, and it won't do any good to pretend you're someone else," Louis was unsympathetic. This 'package' was keeping him from his extremely predictable and thrice-read magazine, which he was inclined to resent.

Schultz's eyes roved around the room. "I tell you the truth, I am Sergeant Hans Schultz, and I am a guard at the prison camp. Look!" He dug under his shirt collar and produced his dog tags. Louis had the strange impression that he was pleased with himself for remembering their existence.

"Hans Schultz," he read. "How did you get mistaken for a general? Briefly, if you don't mind."

"I refuse to answer on grounds that I might tell the truth!"

"Look, you may as well tell me," Lassen reasoned. "It might be your one chance to ever see the light of day again."

Schultz wilted. "It was an accident! I got a twelve hour pass from the Kommandant-he was in a very good mood, because the prisoners had not been up to any monkey business for a whole day!" His tone implied some sort of record. "So I went to the Hofbrau for a beer and a little cheese-the Hofbrau has very good cheese-and when I came back to the camp I saw a light on in the VIP quarters. I said to myself, I said, Schultz, there is not supposed to be any light on in the VIP quarters!"

Louis sighed, put his feet up on the bunk, and resigned himself.

"I went into the VIP quarters, and there was a plate of caviar and some crackers, and an apple. I wish I had taken the apple for the Little Cockroach to make another strudel." For a moment Louis considered inquiring into the strudel, and then dismissed it.

"There was a glass of wine, and it looked like good wine. So I drank it. Then my eyelids got very heavy, and my chin was more comfortable resting down on my chest. Then I was in this bunk, and you are telling me I am on a submarine."

"You are on a submarine," Louis confirmed.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be the wrong thing to say. Schultz lurched to his feet and bolted for the door faster than any man of his size had a right to move. He careened out the door, down the passage, and grabbed randomly at another door to hurl himself through in a desperate attempt to escape. The door happened to belong to the officers' bathroom, known on the submarine as the 'head', and when Louis and E.T. collided outside it Schultz was relieving his stomach of the wine and caviar he had consumed before his adventure began.

"Sergeant? Sergeant Schultz?" Lassen tapped the door.

"Sergeant? He's supposed to be a general!" E.T. hissed. "What happened?"

"They shipped the wrong package!" Tap. Knock. Thump. "Open the door!"

"How could they ship the wrong package? What are we supposed to do now? London is expecting a general!"

"That's not my problem. He wants to be let off."

"What, in the middle of a pouring rain storm?" Tarrandale's tone clearly showed what he thought of Schultz's expectations.

"That's what I said to him-in this weather? For the last time, Schultzie, open that door!" Louis's words propelled an ounce or two of courage into the sergeant's huge form and he appeared, pale of face and with trembling hands. "It's gonna be okay, Sergeant, it really is."

"I want to get off." The bluster from earlier had turned to a pitiful pout.

"I'm sorry, Sergeant. We can't just surface any time we feel like it." E.T. made a feeble attempt at explaining. "Besides, there is a lot of classified information connected to this submarine. You might get loose-tongued and say something to the wrong person."

"I see nothing, nothing!" Schultz repeated his assurances. "I am very good that that. I see nothing, I hear nothing, I say nothing! No matter what monkey business you boys are up to!"

"Let's go see the skipper," Lassen offered, feeling slightly overwhelmed by the prisoner's easy friendliness toward enemy sailors.

"A sergeant? You got yourself shipped off to England and you're only a sergeant!" The skipper was not a cheerful type when things went according to plan, let alone when it didn't.

"I am sorry, Captain," Schultz apologized. "I have often told Kommandant Klink that he ought to have promoted me-there was that time when my old friend Lieutenant Kammler who became General Kammler, and Colonel Hogan said that I should become a Major, but Colonel Klink refused the promotion-"

"I'm not interested in Colonel Klink," the captain interrupted.

"Nobody is," Schultz said in an undervoice to Louis, who choked down a laugh.

"And why are you wearing civilian clothing instead of your uniform?" demanded the skipper irritably. "You should have changed back into your uniform immediately after your leave ended, then we wouldn't be having all these problems!"

E.T. felt an urge to defend the enormous man and spoke up in his precise tones. "It's only until tomorrow, and then he's going to take it off again. There's a bit of a gap in the weather forecast, so we should be able to slip into Point Y24 to return the sergeant home."

"Oh, we have to deliver him home?" The skipper's voice was thick with sarcasm. "How are we to get in touch with the underground to pick him up?"

"You could use a smoke bomb to call them," Schultz's ill-timed suggestion was met with speechlessness. "Carter uses them all the time. He is very good with such things, although I am not supposed to see that. I see nothing, nothing! But you take your average, basic smoke bomb-"

"Enough about the smoke bombs," Louis suggested.

"That's okay," Schultz agreed. "I don't know anything about them anyway. It was just an idea."

"We'll figure something out, Schultzie," E.T. said. "Don't you worry."

"That is good. You are nice boys, I think, and you will figure out something. You do not want to take me all the way to England in a submarine. I am much too heavy."

"I'm going back to the radio," E.T. said hastily, and vanished in the manner of a rabbit hotly pursued by a terrier.

"Royal Navy 371 calling Papa Bear, over."

"Royal Navy, this is Papa Bear. Go ahead, over," the deep-voiced radioman said.

"It appears the package you shipped has a label misdirected. Need to return for replacement postage, over."

"Replacement postage?" This was a different voice, the man E.T. was certain was Papa Bear himself.

"The package is addressed to a Sergeant Schultz."

The Papa Bear radioman made the same mistake that E.T. had made earlier and left his finger on the transmit button. "What the-how did that happen?" It was Papa Bear's voice demanding answers.

"He must've drunk the wine, and Carter mistook him for the general. Sorry, Colonel."

"We'd like to deliver him to Point Y24 tonight, if you can arrange it with the underground," E.T. offered.

"We'll take care of it," the voice on the other end promised.

E.T. heard a gasp and turned to see Schultz standing in the doorway. "Who was that you are talking to?"

"Just arranging your ride home," E.T. waved him back, then spoke into the radio. "Royal Navy 371 over and out."

"I know that voice!" Schultz puffed himself up with righteous indignation, all the way into the overhang of the bulkhead. He winced and rubbed his head. "That was-" He encountered a penetrating stare and swallowed his words. "That was nothing, nothing. I hear nothing!"

The black water of the hidden cove was still and mysterious as the storm moved on. The conning tower of the submarine faintly resembled the masts of the ancient ships which had once sailed there. On the deck, emerging from the open hatch, E.T. and Louis escorted a life-jacket-clad Sergeant Schultz to where the water gently lapped against the metal hull.

"It was nice to meet you boys," the sergeant said gravely. "But I am glad that I do not have to eat your rations any longer."

"We wish we didn't have to eat them," Louis retorted. "So long, Schultz."

"Take care, Sergeant," E.T. shook hands with the large man. "And remember, you never saw this submarine."

Schultz made a zipping motion across his lips. "How am I to get to shore?"

"There's a boat waiting to pick you up. You just need to swim a hundred metres or so and they'll find you."

"Swim! I cannot swim-" Schultz's words were cut short by a firm hand in the small of his back that catapulted him toward the dark water below. Almost immediately after the splash, E.T. spotted a small boat moving out from the shore.

"So long, Schultz." He saluted the splashing figure and turned back toward the hatch.

"Papa Bear calling Royal Navy 371, over."

"Go ahead Papa Bear, this is Royal Navy 371, over."

"Just wanted to let you know that the package that was redirected has returned to the post office safe and damp. We'll be shipping the correctly labeled package shortly."

Oh boy. It never stops does it. "Royal Navy over and out."


End file.
